How can you not love every single Frank Henenlotter masterpiece? From the ridiculously demented Basket Case trilogy, to the almost ethereal head trips in Brain Damage woven with a shoestring budget? Not to mention Frankenhooker has one of the coolest vhs covers ever. The button on the front, when pressed, screams the iconic line ‘Wanna Date’ that will haunt you for the rest of your life–after you watch the movie, of course.

Seriously, though, I’m not gonna lie. This is Weird Science meets Jack the Ripper. It’s Frankenstein meets Valley Girl. It’s just fun. James Lorinz (the poor man’s Andrew McCarthy) isn’t the greatest actor ever, but I have yet to see a movie where he wasn’t absolutely charming with his silly characters and over the top screen roles. Patty Mullen is just as great (and I can’t recommend Doom Asylum enough if Frankenhooker grabs your attention). Start October off right with Frankenhooker, and maybe finish it off with Slime City if you’ve got a strong stomach, but do not pass this movie up!

It’s that time of year again. The Fog rolls in on your dvd shelf, eery Carpenter tunes playing as it awaits Halloween, while the echoes of ‘Trick ‘R Treat‘ can almost be heard outside your front door, and The Thing becomes Ravenous for Popcorn…yet, at the same time you wonder why these film references I just made seem to be disproportionately John Carpenter titles and a few other random titles thrown in. It’s like this game is Child’s Play, a veritable Witches of Eastwick…

Okay, that last one didn’t make sense at all, even as a play on words. Anyway, this October I decided to not only post the instant watch list on time (for once), but mix it with some Hulu for variety. Alas and alack, it’s mainly because Netflix really didn’t roll out with much for horror this October…and the proportion of films I actually wanted to watch that I hadn’t seen…well, this just seemed to be a little bit less painful. So, without further ado, the list begins…

As I was preparing for our upcoming podcast episode (at long last), I recalled a movie I’d seen last year. Excellent atmosphere, an interesting story arc, and a good example of a movie on my incredibly long Netflix list that I had put off way too long before actually watching it.

13 Curses (Trece Campanadas) is the story of a young man going back to the town he spent his childhood in before a mysterious accident occurred one stormy night claiming the life of his father and the sanity of his mother.

His father was an incredible artist with inclinations towards the more morbid side of sculpting, which in itself is always pretty awesome when you’re dealing with vengeful spirit movies. But of course, this is more than that. Much more. Luis Tosar delivers an incredible performance as the ghost and memory of Mateo, the main character’s father. This was actually one of my first Luis Tosar films, and it’s a great entry into his lexicon.

The Spanish language itself lends itself to incredible horror potential. There’s something about the sound, the passion of the words themselves, and I just don’t know if 13 Curses would have been nearly as good if it had been of the English fare. An absolutely incredible movie worth a watch on any night.

As Halloween approaches, I’m reminded of a film I watched all the time as a kid. Despite some massive butchering and very confusing cuts as a result, I always had plenty of fun watching all of the weird underground mutant people acting crazy as shit (as they tend to in any Clive Barker story.)

Imagine Hellraiser if the protagonist WANTED to become a Cenobyte, and if there wasn’t a puzzle box but instead a weird cult dynamic. That’s pretty much Nightbreed in the form that I’ve seen. Now on the 28th (6 days from now as I’m posting this little feature) Scream Factory is releasing a special Blu-ray/DVD with the cut we’re all familiar with AND a director’s cut. Apparently that one is incredible, and I personally can not wait to see it. But you’ve got to admire a movie that somehow manages to be entertaining, even if it loses a massive amount of relevant plot points after a massacre in the cutting room.

A year after the success of Dracula, Bela Lugosi found himself onscreen in another (though much more independent) feature which featured his piercing gaze at it’s best. Oh sure. White Zombie is not an excellent example of acting, most of it is your typical 30s low-budget ham. But…there’s a certain charm in this film.

One thing I particularly like is that the heroine shares my name, but a more relevant aspect I’d like to mention is her acting in particular once she becomes zombified. The lead actress, Madge Bellamy, was a relatively popular silent film actress. So her over-the-top gesticulating and posing is really a relic of the previous decade, and it’s very clear in this movie how drastic the transition between talkie acting and silent acting was becoming. Now I’m not criticizing the style at all, I actually love it…in a silent movie. Somehow when she’s this angelic zombie, though, it really works. I suppose it helps that she doesn’t say anything else until the very end of the picture. She’s rather like the ghost of the 20s, stepping through into the 30s to give a final good-bye to the old style in exchange for the new.

If you are a fan of zombie pictures, this is an essential…because it’s one of (if not) the first zombie movies. Not your Fulci-style corpses, but the old-fashioned voodoo kind. People seemingly dead, put into mental slavery through means of a devilish concoction and…if the lobby card up there isn’t a slight hint…the gaze (and I guess hands) of their zombie master.

The combination of some silent film style acting, the music, and the constant close-ups when Lugosi uses his powers…reminds me of ballet. It’s really quite beautiful.

Lugosi is great in this, in the way only he could have been, dastardly and disturbing. There’s no doubt the man had massive screen presence. Some of the pacing is slow, which is to be expected, but I think anyone who really loves the horror genre really needs to devote some time to White Zombie, if not from an entertainment perspective alone, then at least for the historical aspects.

Re-watching this film for our upcoming podcast episode, I was reminded that this is just a fun movie. Sure, it may not be as niche as Sugar Hill, and certainly not as dark as Dagon…but not all horror movies are made alike. Some are horror comedy, some are more kid-friendly. Barring the sexy times between the keymaster and the gatekeeper, you’ve got yourself a pretty solid (and enjoyable) kid-friendly movie here.

Sure, some of the effects are dated. It’s hard to find a movie more than 6 years old that doesn’t have dated SFX…but I’m still a bit more intrigued by the stop-motion statues than I would have been if they were cgi monsters.

It spawned two cartoon series, a mega cache of merchandise (I’ve got a Slimer doll tucked away on my shelf right now) and even got itself a tidy little lawsuit from Huey Lewis, which ultimately got settled out of court.

It’s a good weekend picture. It’s a good movie to watch with kids. It’s a good movie to watch with friends. Ghostbusters (and the sequel) are ultimately just good movies, and worth re-watching every couple of years. I’ll save further opinions for our upcoming podcast, but I think it’s fairly obvious I won’t have much negative to say about it.

Maybe it’s because the movie came out the year I was born, maybe it’s because I think Eric Stoltz was incredibly cute in this movie. Whatever the reason, I actually prefer this sequel to the remake than the first part.

This is a very good late-night movie, as most of my favorites tend to be. When you’re hardly awake, and your body gives you the option of immediately falling asleep when your head hits the pillow, or to just chill out in front of the tv flipping through the weird stations you don’t bother with during the day. I saw this when I was 12, which was actually the most active late-night movie year in my life.

The combination of atmosphere, setting, and the sheer isolation the protagonist faces dealing with his ‘affliction’…it’s just the perfect formula for a fun horror film. Not to mention it came out right at the peak of incredibly horror SFX before the decline in the mid-90s as the people were discovering they much preferred really bad CGI to the look of actual visceral horror. Can you tell I’m bitter? Yes, I’m bitter.

There is something in the film too, which I think a lot of horror directors today have forgotten about, and even most non-horror directors. I actually felt for the characters, sympathy. There’s of course room for the anti-hero in a well-written screenplay, but I don’t think it is ever nearly as powerful as caring about what happens to him/her when you’re watching a movie. It makes the next terrible moment actually terrible, and in The Fly 2, there are so many little (and a couple of major) moments that legitimately make me sad every time I watch this, and enhance the power of the more gruesome moments.

With that in mind, if you are an animal lover, the kind who can not handle bad things happening to sweet little pets…maybe you should stay away from this movie.

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